In the ‘Asian Room’ are placed the larger objects from the Pacific, such as spears, clubs, and paddles. The collection of spears is very large and interesting.
Australia and part of North America.
The Australian Collection is very complete, and it would not be easy to replace it, inasmuch as the native races are dwindling in most parts of that continent.
North and South America.
The American department in chief includes antiquities and recent implements and dresses from the North American Indians; ancient Carib implements; and recent collections from British Guiana, and other parts of South America. The most valuable part of the contents of this room is the collection of Mexican antiquities, which is not only extensive, but includes some specimens of great rarity. Among them should be especially mentioned the following:—An axe of Avanturine jade, carved into the form of a human figure; a remarkable knife of white chalcedony; a sacrificial collar formed of a hard green stone; a squatting figure, of good execution, sculptured out of a volcanic rock; and three remarkable specimens coated with polished stones. The latter consist of a wooden mask covered with a mosaic of blue stones, presumed to be turquoises, but more probably a rare form of amazon-stone; a human skull made into a mask, and coated with obsidian and the blue stone mentioned above; and a knife with a blade of flint, and with a wooden handle, sculptured to represent a Mexican divinity, and encrusted with obsidian, coral, malachite, and other precious materials. |Franks’ Report, as above.| There is also a small but choice collection of Peruvian pottery.
A catalogue of the collection was privately printed by Mr. Christy in 1862; but it embraces only a small part of the present collection. A more extended catalogue is in preparation.
It is due to accuracy to add that the aspect of the rooms devoted to the Christy Museum in Victoria Street, and the facilities of study which they afford, are utterly unsatisfactory to real students. They are adapted only to holiday sightseers, who look and go, and but to very small groups, indeed, even of them.
Every praise is due both to the Trustees and to their officer, for having done their best, under strait and lamentable limitations, the removal of which is the duty of Parliament and of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, not that of the Trustees. Under the Premiership of such an eminent scholar and writer as Mr. Gladstone, humbler students of history and of literature would fain hope that a long-standing reproach will speedily be removed; but his ministerial surroundings are unfriendly to such anticipations. After words which we have recently heard, from the Treasury Bench itself, about Public Parks, there is only scanty ground for hope that much improvement can, under existing circumstances, be looked for in respect to Public Museums.
At all events, the condition, as to space, of the Christy Museum in Victoria Street, no less than the condition, in that respect, of portions of the general Museum of Antiquities at Bloomsbury itself—and of nearly all our splendid national collections in Natural History—gives tenfold importance to that question of speedy enlargement or efficient reconstruction which it will be my duty rather to state, than to discuss, in the next chapter. |The state of the Christy Collection viewed in its bearings upon the question of Museum reconstruction.| It will be my earnest aim to state it with impartiality, and, for the most part, in better words than my own.
The archæological bequest of James Woodhouse, of Corfu.